[ { "id": 207003, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS*\n\nIn my research into Chinese iconography I made a considerable nuisance of myself in three particular two-storey shophouses in the middle of Singapore's Hokkien (Fukienese) area (see plate 1), by questioning the god carvers' every action during the process of carving and repairing images of Chinese gods.\n\nIn Singapore three families are in partial competition, yet from their full order books business would appear to be thriving. Two of the families are Hokkien originating from near Foochow and Amoy respectively and the third is Teochew (Ch'ao chou) from Swatow, all being second or third generation Singaporeans who have never visited their homeland. Into these shophouses are crowded the unmarried longterm employees in addition to the families themselves, notably the apprentices who sleep on campbeds in the shop and eat en famille. One master carver bewailed the shortage of apprentices who in this age of affluence were unwilling to undertake a long and poorly paid apprenticeship.\n\nI have always referred to these craftsmen as god carvers and their shops as godshops. My article \"Three Deities\" in this Journal in 1972 provoked the editorial comment that the term was colourful and as such would be left unedited. My terminology is a far cry from the jargon of the anthropologist and it is my intention to describe, in my own terms, the production of gods in one of these godshops.\n\nThese godshops are ten foot square or ten by twenty foot work-spaces on the ground floor of the shophouses. Here new gods are carved and painted and the old repaired, not only for the island of Singapore but also for places as far north as Thailand and Cambodia, as far east as Borneo and Brunei and as far south as Java. This group of godcarvers is unique in being the only Fukienese and Ch'ao chou specialist carvers still plying their trade save for a few\n\n* Major Stevens' other contributions on the interesting subject of Chinese gods in South-east Asia and Taiwan appeared in Vols. 12-13 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207005, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "70\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nand Kwangtung, the Southern maritime coastal boat people's stylized wooden images and the stone, porcelain and hard stone household images of the wealthy. However, it is the Fukienese style I am about to describe, although the carving styles of the Teochew and Hokkien in Singapore do not differ all that markedly (Plates 6 and 7).\n\nThe Singaporean god carvers were well versed in recognizing the mode and marks of craftsmen from the other Southern Chinese maritime provinces, particularly the handiwork of their forefathers, and each master carver has a widely recognized style of his own. One carver spent considerable time showing me the variations which principally occur in the decoration on the front face of the base of the image. A hundred years ago special artists were employed to paint this \"front face trade mark”, one of the more exquisite being a rose on a long stem adopted by a Foochow city carver of note,\n\nThe carvers did not work from plans or sketches, having a clear idea of the image in their mind; but it took all my powers of persuasion to make one of the carvers sit down and sketch the main features of as many gods as possible, as he knew them (Plate 8).\n\nWhen questioned about how specific were the individual gods' features and markings, it was soon apparent that each carver had his own ideas about head-dresses, robes, beards and also, rather surprisingly, over posture. An example was the carving of Lu F'ung P'in (Plate 7), a famous doctor, the patron of barbers and one of the Eight Immortals. There were many variations, the carvers agreed, and each carver knew he wore a flat “tile” hat, carried a fly whisk, an umbrella or a gourd and was robed in blue; and when I produced an image of him wearing green robes, they fell over themselves claiming the decorator had been either ignorant or colour blind. Having been unanimous about this, however, they promptly disagreed over the Northern Emperor (✯✯✯) whose recognition features are a snake and tortoise, bare feet, unkempt hair and a fore finger of the left hand pointing vertically at waist height. Quite a riotous scene ensued during which snippets from various books such as the Ming dynasty novel \"The Deification of the Gods\" (###), and quotes from great carvers, together with recollections of their handiworks, were voiced to prove a point.\n\nIt was quite obvious that the carvers were far from unanimous about details of the Northern Emperor figure. The tortoise could", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207204, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 275, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "咤\n\nKabik(51)\n\nPlate 8. A Hokkien god carver's sketch of The\n\nThird Prince, Na Tó (哪吒).\n\nPlate 9. The attendant to Tién Hou the Goddess of the Sea, \"The one who hears the following wind\" (四耳), having gold leaf applied.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207205, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 276, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "Plate 10.\n\nBlocks of camphor wood awaiting carving. Those ordered and chosen for a specific job have charms pasted on them to prevent evil spirits from entering them.\n\n*\n\n温府三公子\n\nPlate 11. A block of wood awaiting carving, beside a\n\nhalf-completed image.\n\nPlate 12. Hokkien god carver's ruler.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207258, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "18\n\nJOHN T. MYERS\n\nEspecially in Fukien, Taiwan, and the eastern extremity of Kwang-tung Province one finds an apparently long-standing tradition of Chinese spirit-mediumship. Among the Western language accounts of that phenomenon the most notable are Doolittle's2 description of its practice in Fukien Province during the waning years of the Ch'ing Dynasty; Elliott's3 discussion of such cults among the Chinese of Singapore; and recent monographs by Jordan and Ahern on mediums in rural sectors of contemporary Taiwan.\n\nWith the exception of an article by Potter on female mediums in a New Territories village, there is an absence of detailed systematic study of spirit-mediumship in the Hong Kong region; and, for that matter, in Kwangtung Province. The dearth of scholarly literature is complemented by an apparent lack of familiarity with mediumship among Hong Kong's Cantonese residents.\" In those few instances when one encounters a knowledgeable informant his knowledge is usually limited to the type of female mediums discussed by Potter. The female medium known in Cantonese as a man sing poHis ordinarily a middle-aged or elderly woman who at the request of clients will contact spirits of the deceased. The man sing po in the urban area invariably act on an individualistic basis and conduct seances in their own homes rather than at temples. This type of medium is seldom, if ever, the central focus of an organized cult.\n\nThe man sing po, however, is not the only type of medium operating in contemporary Hong Kong. A reasonably careful search of resettlement estates and other urban residential complexes having a significant Chiu-Chow, Hokkien, or Hoi-Luk-Fung9 population will reveal the existence of not a few temples which serve as the operational base for another type of medium, the kei tung *E*\n\nUnlike the man sing po the kei tung whom we have encountered in Hong Kong are males who do not hold commerce with the spirits of deceased mortals. Instead, the kei tung claims a special relationship with one or more traditional deities who on occasion utilize his bodily faculties to communicate with mortals. The urban kei tung is also more apt to limit his possession ceremonies to the \n\n*\n\nDespite the reference to non-Cantonese speech groups, romanization follows R. T. Cowles' Pocket Dictionary of Cantonese, 2nd edition, Hong Kong, 1949, this being the common tongue of Hong Kong. Arthur Wolf touches on the difficulties of transcription for Hokkien in the preface to his edited collection Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford 1974).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207266, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "26\n\nJOHN T. MYERS\n\nmanaged by members of one Chinese speech group, the Chiu-chow. The \"honorary\" committee members, the working committee members, the tan sang, and the kei tung are Chiu-chow. Observation of numerous possession ceremonies reveals that it is rare to discover a non-Chiu-chow among the worshippers. This de facto exclusivity is rendered more formal in a brochure advertising places for tablets of the deceased in the “Hall of 100 Surnames\" by the statement that the places are reserved for heung lei or fellow countrymen, i.e. fellow Chiu-chow.\n\nWhile from a ritual point of view Tai Wong Ye is correctly described as a spirit-medium temple, from a social point of view it is akin to a type which Feuchtwang2 designates a \"Compatriot” temple. It is a place where members of the Chiu-chow minority speech group can gather to converse freely in their native tongue, exchange useful information, and enjoy that sense of solidarity which Durkheim posits as the chief product of shared ritual. The low-keyedness of the ritual offerings is understandable when one realizes that the target population is one already predisposed by regional socialization to accept the reality and effectiveness of the kei tung's mediumship. Our conclusion therefore is that the success of the Kwun Tong spirit-medium temple is due more to the social selectivity of its appeal than to a heightened interest in spirits and their mediums on the part of the general population.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Firth 1959, p. 141.\n\n2 Feuchtwang, no reference details available.\n\n3 Elliott, 1955.\n\n4 Jordan, 1972.\n\n5 Ahern, 1973.\n\n6 Potter, 1974.\n\n7 This observation is based on casual questioning of Hong Kong residents over a three-year time period.\n\n8 Potter, op. cit.\n\n9 The Chiu-Chow and Hoi-Luk-Fung people's native regions are the eastern coastal counties of Kwangtung Province. The Hokkien are natives of Fukien Province which is immediately east of Kwangtung Province.\n\n10 Tak Kaau is a syncretic cult which claims tens of thousands of supporters from the Chiu-Chow communities in Southeast Asia. Although more ritual attention is awarded to Chinese deities the Tak Kaau pantheon includes Christ, Allah, and deities from the Hindu religion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207278, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "38 \n\nWELLINGTON K. K. CHAN \n\nCharitable halls in Shanghai did not display the same amount of community leadership even though they should have had a greater community base than the guilds. The reason seems obvious. Charitable halls dominated in communities where the merchants had no problem of collaboration because of differences in dialects or in regional customs. Hence their pre-eminence in places like Canton and Hong Kong. In Shanghai, the cultural gaps between, say, a Cantonese and a Ningpo merchant were often insurmountable. In the final analysis, charitable halls, like the formalised committees of guilds and Landsmannschaften, failed to grow into truly community-wide institutions. \n\nAchievements \n\nMerchant leaders in nineteenth century China were adept at adjusting their organisations to the changing needs of the day. By building up different types of organisations, they hoped to acquire first, broader economic and social interests; second, a large community base; and third, greater political leadership responsibility. As a result, these leaders were singularly successful in the first, especially in providing social welfare and municipal services, but were only partially successful in the second. Thus, in the more homogenous commercial centres such as Canton and Swatow, the charitable halls and the assembly commanded a community base far larger than the traditional guilds, but could not win the allegiance of the entire community. In other places like Shanghai, where the merchant leaders came from several provinces, it was more difficult to set up community-wide organisations. Even the chamber of commerce which followed these organisations and which had explicit aim of involving each entire community was unable to do without sectional interests. \n\nThe Shanghai chamber was dominated by the Ningpo merchants from its inception in 1904 to at least the 1920's.35 The Canton chamber had seven vice-presidents (fu-pan) who were elected by the various guilds from among the chamber directors.36 The most extreme assertion of this form of group separatism was written into the bylaws of the overseas Chinese chamber of commerce in Singapore. There, two concurrent presidents were elected by the two most powerful Hokkien and Teochiu (i.e. Ch'ao-chou) merchant groups, while a specific number of vice-presidents and directors were assigned, in diminishing sizes, to these two and three", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208915, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "PERSISTENCE & PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE\n\n45\n\nsuch as gardening, farming, and construction work in Hong Kong, and have considerable influence in these businesses. The development of voluntary associations is closely related to this situation. For instance, the Waichow Union Sheung Shui Branch seems to be a guild of the Hakka farm workers in the Territories; the Tze-kam District Countrymen's Association, a guild of the Hakka construction workers; the Lamma Branch of the Waichow Clansmen General Association, a guild of the Hakka vegetable gardeners; and the Association of Waichow-Chaochow-Hokkien Countrymen in Aplichau, a Hoklos' club of sailors, lightermen, grocers, and small businessmen. Therefore, as long as the facts of division of labor by dialect and locality exist, voluntary associations based on these traditional organizing principles continue to survive for the maintenance of solidarity, the persistence of culture, and the protection of the group's interests. In other words, the phenomena of \"group within group\" and division of labor by dialect and locality seem to be antagonistic, but are actually complementary in social and economic fields. This means that cultural differences do not in themselves explain tensions within a plural society, nor does economic exploitation of one group by another lead necessarily to conflict. On the contrary, conflict across group boundaries does appear when there are similar economic classes in both groups, in direct competition with each other (Willmott, 1967:96). Taking the present study as an example, tension and confrontation between the two Waichow Hakka association clusters, which are led by the Waichow Clansmen General Association and the Ten Districts of Waichow Association respectively, seem to be more keen and competitive than those between either of these two and the Waichow Hoklos' association cluster. However, from an anthropological point of view, confrontation between these diverse segments can also act as a positive unifying factor for group solidarity. As Coser states (1956:137):\n\nConflict creates links between contenders. It creates and modifies common norms necessary for the readjustment of the relationship, makes possible a reassessment of relative power, and thus serves as a balancing mechanism which helps to maintain and consolidate groups.\n\nViewed from another angle, many Waichow Hakka who came to Hong Kong after 1949, because of their socio-political background...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209682, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 339, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n317\n\narea stretches back only to the seventeenth century were originally Hakka, even when the unanimous tradition of themselves and their neighbours is that they were not, is surely a rather cavalier approach to the need for historical caution.\n\nOn the Chaochiu/Hoklo/Hai-Lufeng residents it is surely unhelpful to downplay the very real and massive cultural, linguistic and socio-economic divisions between these groups and to force them all into a straitjacket of \"Hokkien\": rich business-men immigrants from Chiu Chow or Swatow or the fertile villages nearby have really nothing in common (not even a mutually intelligible language) with penniless coolie immigrants from the thin, infertile sand flats of Hai-Lufeng, or with the boat people descendants of the trading junk families from south Fukien. And “Waichow Hokkien\" is a highly inaccurate title for Hai-Lufeng people! Blake writes his work with an obvious Hakka bias - he lived in a Hakka household and saw other ethnic groups to a large extent through Hakka eyes. This on occasion colours his work, and nowhere more clearly than in this attitude to the \"Hokkien\".\n\nFinally, Blake occasionally drafts into a rather turgid prose over-full of sociological jargon \"ethnic groups are variegated amalgams of both the symbolic motivational dimension and the social organisational dimension of human existence\" and \"the continuum of ethnic group consistency may be analysed in terms of the following variables: (1) categorization (2) interpersonal affiliation (3) occupation (4) incorporation, and (5) government regulation\" for instance which can be heavy on the reader who prefers his books written in English.\n\nP. H. HASE\n\nChinese-English Glossary of Common Terms in Traditional Chinese Medicine (XRD), compilers Ou Ming, Lu Xian, Li Yanwen, Lai Shilong, Chen Xianging, Huang Yuezhong, Chen Jifan, Shen Chao, and Zhen Weiwen, executive editor Ou Ming, Joint Publishing Co. (Hong Kong), 1982 xi + 322 pp.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210291, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 262, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "241\n\ning here and not give them trouble\". According to the introduction in the Pang (see Appendix), as posted up at the main entrance, \"the festival was held for the purpose of assisting the reincarnation of i) the soldiers who died during the world wars, ii) the ancestors of all surnames, and iii) the ghosts who were not worshipped by anyone. And it was hoped that through the mediation of the priests, the Three Buddhas and all the spirits would give their permission and open the door for them to cross-over and become human beings again. However, the worshippers, being more interested in self-prosperity, were more concerned about their own ancestors who are the only ones who can guarantee their prosperity.\n\nV. Conclusion; History of the Festival in Kobe\n\n34\n\nAccording to an appeal to the Hyogo Government in 1873, the Ningpo merchants were the first to hold a Ghost Festival for the Chinese in Kobe. Mr. Chan (70 years old, Cantonese, born and educated in Kobe, now vice-president of the History Museum of the Kobe Chinese) told me that before the Second World War, the festival was organized by the Cantonese who then out-numbered the Hokkienese. The Cantonese were wealthier and 'had more knowledge'. Mr. Chan continued to tell me that during that time the Hokkienese were relatively poor. They were mostly travelling merchants (f). They therefore had no stable residential place neither were they economically strong enough to be the organizers of the festival. Though there was a bachelor-centre for about 17 Hokkienese laborers in Nagoya about 30 years ago, there was no Hokkienese cluster in Kobe. Today, however all the three Chinese Ghost Festivals in Japan are organised by the Hokkienese\". Mr. Chan's narration agrees with the information given by Li Ta-shen.36 The Hokkienese, now organisers of the Festival, had never been an influential group until the end of the Second World War. However, since then, until 1978, the Hokkienese were said to be the centre of the Kobe festival.37\n\nDue to the anti-Chinese incident in Kobe in 1976, the Chinese started to pursue unification among all the different Chinese territorial groups, and to disregard their origins. In 1978, the Kobe Chinese News (US) was changed to the Kansai Chi-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210292, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 263, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "242\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nnese News (MA###); reports about the Ghost Festival in Kobe no longer emphasised the role of the Hokkienese. Thus, the secondary identification (identity of being a Chinese and/or of being a resident in Kobe) instead of the primary identification (identity of blood relation and/or of origins) became the central idea of the Festival. Thus the Festival is more inclusive now.\" The Festival, though including all elements of the secular world as well as the sacred world, stressed only ancestor-worship because only ancestor worship supercedes the boundaries of all social groupings and categories, eases the tension of group competition among the Chinese, and connects all social groupings and categories into one worshipping group which is based primarily on the relationship of the worshippers with Kobe, and secondarily on their territorial identity as Chinese.\n\nNOTES:\n\nThe original meaning of 'Yue Lan' is \"hanging upside down” (of the hungry ghost in Hell). However, during the festival, participants used terms like: Obon (Mah, Japanese term for the festival), Chung Yuan (†, middle of the year, which is a term mainly used by the taoists for the same event), and/or Kuai Chie (m, ghost festival). Some Cantonese even called it a Chiao (M) (simply meaning a festival dedicated to the Gods). Moreover, the documents used during the festival spoke of it as 'Pu Tu' (#), meaning general offering and place where spirits can cross over to this world, e.g. the papers that hung over the entrance of the Tao Ch'ang (entrance A) wrote \"The water and earth Pu Tu is held in this Tao Ch'ang' (*), at the entrance B, it was written 'the Great Occasion of Pu Tu' (E), the invitation card wrote \"the great meeting of Pu Tu' (#★#), and the same term was also used in the P'ang.\n\n1 See Kobe Kakyou Ho (#), no. 71, 1976.3.10. In 1974, there were 46944 Chinese in Japan. 8585 of them lived in Hyogo Prefecture of which 7071 were concentrated in Kobe city. The distribution of the origins of the Chinese in Hyogo Prefecture was as follow: Taiwan (41%), Cantonese (21%), Hokkien (11%), Kiangsu (11%), Shantong (5%), Chekiang (4%), others (7%).\n\nSee plan at the Appendix to this paper, and Plate 15.\n\nPlate 16.\n\n3 Plates 17, 18, 19.\n\n6\n\nSometimes informants called the paper-made houses \"Cho' () without distinguishing between the house for the 'Newly Dead', and that for the gods. Here, Ming-che is used for the house of the \"Newly Dead', and Cho for that of the gods.\n\n7 Plate 20.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210293, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 264, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "243\n\nThe content of the invitation card is: \"The overseas Chinese in Japan will hold a 3-days-4-nights Pu Tu, for the sake of establishing luck by offering and helping all the imprisoned spirits of the water and the earth. The meeting will take place at the Kwan T'i Temple in Kobe city. Please come to the \"Tan\" (altar) to present incense sticks during the 14th, 15th, and 16th of the 7th moon. (1st, 2nd and 3rd of September 1982).” The card was red in colour.\n\n9\n\nThe 13th day and the 17th day of the 7th moon were not mentioned in the invitation card.\n\n10 The Lantern Floating ritual in Japanese is \"To Ro Nagashi', which means to float lanterns(s) (to the sea). During the Japanese Obon, lanterns are sent off on the last day of the festival. Through this, the ghosts and the ancestors are all sent back. During the Kobe festival, the ritual, according to the committee members, was to send off the \"wandering ghosts or those who are not worshipped by anyone (= Mu Zhi Kuai)\". However it seems confusing because after the floating ritual, they continued to give offering to the hungry ghosts as well as to the ancestors for two more nights, and the tablets of the wandering spirits were still inside the Tao Ch'ang. A similar ritual practised in Hong Kong during the Chiao festival is called 'Fong Shui Dang' (t, sending off the water lanterns), which is parallel with the 'Fong Luk Dang\" (PW10, put on the street lights) ritual. The rituals are to invite all the water and earth spirits to attend the offering during the Pu Tu or 'Sai Tai Yau* (*9A, to worship the numerous spirits) of the Chiao festival). The prayer book the Obaku Buddhists used for their morning and night rituals is \"Obaku Zenlin Choobo Kashoo\" (R). The priests called this daily work \"Zenlin Kashoo\" (M).\n\nSee below.\n\n12\n\nPlate 21.\n\n13\n\nPlates 22, 23.\n\n14 The \"Pang' was a book-form name-list in yellow. It had 8 pages with an introduction explaining the reason for holding a Pu Tu. (The introduction is printed in the Appendix).\n\n15 See the introduction to the Pang printed in the Appendix.\n\n16 The beach is at the western end of the Prefecture.\n\n17 Plate 24.\n\n18\n\nSee footnote 10.\n\n19\n\n20\n\nPlate 25.\n\nThe book used for the ritual was \"Yoga Enkoo Kahan\" (1⁄2μÅμ) which is similar to that used in Hong Kong during the 'Sai Tai Yau' ritual. According to an old taoist in Hong Kong, Mr. Lam Pui ( ), the gesture is called \"Poh Yuk” (Z, to break Hell), and through this the ghosts are released and able to come for reincarnation and cross over.\n\n21 Plates 26, 27, 28.\n\n22\n\nNo meat was allowed in the festival area. However, meat was presented at the Ming-che VII. One informant explained that it was because the dead like meat, and one committee member sighed and told me that \"We have no way, because they are from the other Provinces (of China) (##A)\".\n\n20 The sect started from Monk Yin Yuan (C) of Fu-ch'in (Mili), Hokkien. He was invited by the General of the Tokugawa Bankufu (UK) in 1654, In the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210294, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 265, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "244\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nSpring of 1662 the General gave him land in Uji to build the Temple. See “Fu Chin Hsien Chih Shu Lieh” (B) vol. 12, p. 14 (no date).\n\n24 See a copy of the contract for a house in the underworld in the Appendix to this article.\n\n25\n\n26\n\nKulp, D.H., Country Life in South China, pp. 145-148. The Figure-maker of the Kyoto Chinese Ghost Festival is, however, a Japanese.\n\n27 Several Japanese worked in the Kitchen, and two took care of the incense inside the Tao Ch'ang and other odd jobs like carrying things to burn etc.\n\n28 See the document printed in the Appendix from the introduction to the Pang.\n\n29\n\n30\n\nPlate 29. For the tablet in the \"Ancestral Hall\" see the drawing in the Appendix to this article. For the Ming-che see Plate 30.\n\n31 Plate 31.\n\n32\n\n33\n\nAs shown, for instance in DK-NR. Plate 32.\n\n34 See letter printed in the Appendix.\n\n35 Personal interview, Oct. 13, 1982.\n\n36 According to Li, in 1878, 357 Chinese lived in Kobe, 223 of them from Kwangtong and Kwangsi (Liang Kwang); 84 from Kiangsu, Chekiang, and Anhuai (Sankiang); and 50 from Hokkien. See Li Ta-shen, Shen-hu Ta-ban di Hau-chiao, May 15, 1943 (in the collection of the History Museum of the Kobe Chinese). Refer also to So Shi-sai, Fuku Sei no Pooru Unn, p. 12 ff. (unpublished thesis).\n\n37 Kobe Chinese News, Sept. 10, 1977. Kansai Chinese News, Aug. 25, 1978; Sept. 25, 1979; Sept. 1, 1981; Oct. 1, 1982. Until 1978, it was reported that the worshippers were mainly Hokkienese. But, from 1979 it was changed to \"Chinese worshippers from various places of Japan”.\n\n38\n\nOn the one hand, the festival adopted elements that belong to the Japanese, such as: the interpretation of the ritual of Lantern Floating, the Japanese being the mediators, and Japanese was the medium for interdialect group communication. On the other hand, if compared with the Ghost Festival in Uji, Kyoto, the latter is a purely Hokkienese festival. The organizers were Hokkienese, and so were the worshippers. Moreover, the Hokkienese themselves, not the Japanese priests performed the Reporting ritual at the Kyoto festival; there, Hokkienese, not Japanese, was the language for communication. Because of the primary identification or origins, the festival in Kyoto serves more social functions that do not appear in the Kobe festival, e.g. entan (to talk and arrange for marriage). The Ghost Festival in Kyoto is thus one of the 3 main yearly gatherings of the Hokkienese in Japan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210298, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 269, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "248\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\n \n A\n B\n C\n D\n E\n F\n G\n H\n I\n J\n \n \n I\n 李\n M\n 70\n \n Hokkien\n Yokohama\n Lived for 5 years. Grave Resident\n \n C wife (70, Hokkien)\n \n \n \n 陳\n M\n 63\n \n Hokkien\n Kobe\n Grave\n \n C Wife (50 Japanese)\n \n \n IV\n \n M\n 40\n 1-\n Canton\n Yokohama\n 1st arrived in Kobe, Grave.\n \n \n \n \n V\n \n M\n \n \n Shanghai\n Kobe\n Resident\n \n \n \n \n VI\n \n M\n 70\n 4-\n Hokkien\n Kobe\n Grave\n \n \n \n \n VII\n 魏\n M\n 88\n \n Shantong\n Kobe\n Resident born\n \n \n \n \n VIII\n 林\n M\n 60\n \n Shantong\n Kobe\n Resident\n \n \n \n \n IX\n A\n M\n 60\n 1-\n Canton\n Yokohama\n wife\n \n \n \n \n X\n 林\n M\n 50\n 1\n Hokkien\n Kobe\n Resident\n \n \n \n \n XI\n \n M\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n XII\n \n M\n 80\n J-\n 88\n 60\n I Taiwan\n Kobe\n Resident Hokkien Kobe the Asso.\n \n \n XIII\n 沝\n M\n 42\n I+\n Canton\n Kobe\n Resident and 3 children\n \n C Immigrants who he helped C Boss, Friends, mainly Cantonese females\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n C❘ wife (Cantonese, 2nd generation) C sister-in-law-I's wife, grandaughter C worshippers\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n B son-in-law (from Kiangsu) B wife (54, Cantonese 2nd generation, born and lived in Kobe till married) B Brother (Chairman of the Asso.) C Committee members ex-chairman of | A | Committee members and others C2nd brother\n \n\nA = Code number of the Ming-che of the 'Newly Dead' on Plan of Festival Area\n\nB = Surname of the \"Newly Dead\"\n\nC = Sex of the 'Newly Dead'\n\n▸ = Estimated age of the 'Newly Dead' at death\n\nE = Year(s) after death\n\nF = Origins of the 'Newly Dead'\n\nG = Residential place of the 'Newly Dead' in Japan\n\nH = Relationship with Kobe\n\nI = Class of Ming-che (A=470,000 yen, B=350,000 yen, C=200,000 yen)\n\nJ = Informants' relationship with the 'Newly Dead'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210379, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 350, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "329\n\nstudent who can find a generous sponsor for complementary studies of those rural areas which lie outside Dr. Hayes's purview: the other Peng Chau (in Mirs Bay or Dapeng-wan), Tap Mun, Sha Tau Kok, Tai Po, Yuen Long and their hinterlands. Even within Hong Kong's 400 square miles can be seen the kind of variations which Ouyang Hsiu described (in his preface to the Hsin Wu-tai Shih) as: it is a strength of Chinese society that such healthy variability can exist. Time is short, because when I was last there in 1982, the opening up of roads had already begun to erode village life, as it did in Tsuen Wan, Lantao and New Kowloon,\n\n+\n\n-\n\nDr. Hayes is a true Cadet, in the tradition of Cecil Clementi, Walter Schofield, Stephen Balfour and John Barrow, and his work puts even them in the shade. But oh! oh! that romanization! He says disarmingly in the Foreword \"I confess that romanization has been a problem.\" No shame in that: Chinese — whichever you wish of the 3,000 languages, all known as Chinese — does not lend itself to phonetic writing, and the Cadmean alphabet, while no doubt adequate for the Western Semitic language for which it was devised, was not really suited to Latin and is hopeless for English (though it does not do too badly for Finnish and Welsh) — how much less for Chinese? But of all the inadequate answers to this problem, why choose the obsolete Wade-Giles without its vital apostrophes and tone-numerals, too for what Western academics obstinately call “Mandarin”; and Meyer-Wempe for Cantonese? The latter, with omitted or misprinted diacritical marks, of which I found many (and have sent Dr. Hayes a list) is gibberish. Besides, being based on West River dialects, which differ considerably from the Upper Punyu which, after the eclipse of Sai Kwan wa from 1905 onward, became the standard speech of Canton, Hong Kong and overseas Cantonese (except those from the 5 districts known as Sze Yap), Meyer & Wempe's handy little dictionary has serious shortcomings. What a pity an updated Eitel never appeared!\n\nNothing will ever persuade me that Cantonese, Hakka and Hokkien place names should be written in letters indicating a pronunciation which no local would understand. (I suppose it must be a matter of politics, with which no scholar should soil his hands). Just you try getting a boat to “Shayuyung”! (The place is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210877, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 228, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "211\n\nsome 500 interested people and twice as many had been turned away for lack of room.\n\nIt was time to act. After an impromptu huddle of the dignitaries on the platform during a momentary lull in the proceedings, Mr. Poore announced that a second meeting would be held in a larger building at which the two Chinese would be designated for their work. Mr. Poore later observed that he had been careful not to alarm the Episcopalians with any suggestion of an act implying ordination to a particular ecclesiastical office. He used the term Scripture reader or lay agent to refer to the two young men.\n\nThere were some sour notes struck in the general community. One newspaper sneered at attempts to convert Chinese. Another tried to discredit the qualifications of the young men. In reporting these matters, Mr. Poore noted that the criticisms backfired. They attracted the attention of the community to the meeting and provoked curiosity and interest.\n\nThe Attorney General volunteered to be the main speaker. In his address he reassured his hearers that he had examined and cross-examined the candidates. For Mr. Poore there could have been no better confirmation of his efforts: \"It was a triumphant vindication, and, coming from such a quarter, admitted of no cavil.\"\n\nTo top it all, the committee had been able to secure the services of a missionary from China to accompany and supervise the newly appointed Scripture readers. Mr. Young, the missionary, had been stationed at Amoy. He was able to talk with the Hokien-speaking Chinese and the two young men with the Cantonese.\n\nThe team was sent off to the goldfields at Castlemaine. Here the Christian community had just built the first church in the town. After the arrival of the Rev. Mr. Young and the two Scripture readers, a meeting was held. Mr. Poore, who was present, reported: \"Meeting admirable, speeches good, great pressure of people, many could not get in... The whole Christian community seems to be pervaded with a tender concern for their salvation.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211591, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 6, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nARTICLES:\n\nDan Waters\n\nLIBRARIES\n\n138 1937. vii\n\nAR\n\nIn the Steps of Lu Pan: Reminiscences of Building in Hong Kong\n\nK.J.P. Lowe\n\nHong Kong, 26 January 1841: Hoisting the Flag Revisited\n\nKeith Stevens\n\nThe Jade Emperor and his Family, Yu Huang Ta Ti\n\nKeith Stevens - Fukienese Wang Yeh (Ong Ya [Hokkien])\n\nP.H. Munro-Faure\n\nThe Kiukiang Incident of 1927\n\nA.D. Blackburn\n\nHong Kong, December 1941 July 1942\n\nChan Ka-yan\n\nJoss Stick Manufacturing: A Study of a Traditional Industry in Hong Kong\n\nP.H. Hase\n\nCheung Shan Kwu Tsz, An Old Buddhist Nunnery in the New Territories and its Place in Local Society\n\nJ.H. Haan\n\nThalia and Terpsichore on The Yangtze, Survey of Foreign Theatre and Music in Shanghai 1850-1865\n\nFred Dagenais\n\nJohn Fryer's Early Years in China: I. Diary of His Voyage to Hong Kong\n\nChan Wing-hoi\n\nThe Dangs of Kam Tin and Their Jiu Festival\n\nxxi\n\nxxiii\n\n8\n\n18\n\n34\n\n61\n\n77\n\n94\n\n121\n\n158\n\n252\n\n302\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nE. Sinn\n\nNotes on the Robert Hart Papers at the University of Hong Kong Library\n\n376\n\nP.H. Hase\n\nA Song from Sha Tau Kok on the 1911 Revolution\n\n382\n\nP.H. Hase\n\nThe Mutual Defence Alliance (Yeuk) of the New Territories\n\n384\n\nP.H. Hase - More on The Man the Emperor Decapitated\n\n388\n\nIssei Tanaka\n\nThe White Tiger\n\n389\n\nKeith Stevens - British Chinese Labour Corps Labourers Buried in England\n\n390\n\nAnthony Siu Kwok-kin\n\nThe History of Hong Kong: From A Village to A City\n\n391\n\nAnthony Siu Kwok-kin\n\nHistorical Records\n\nAnthony Siu Kwok-kin\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nTai Yu Shan from Chinese\n\n394\n\nA Tung Lo Wan\n\n399\n\n400\n\nV", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211644, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "34\n\nFUKIENESE WANG YEH (王爺)\n\n(ONG YA [HOKKIEN])\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n'Wang Yeh' is the popular and workaday title given to a large number of Chinese deities China-wide and not, as widely believed, just in South China. The Wang Yeh of the Fukienese in South-East China, for example, are in no way connected with, and have nothing in common with, for instance, the Szechuanese riverboat people's Wang Yeh.\n\nAll Wang Yeh in Fukienese communities tend to be thought of by outsiders as pestilence deities; that is, protectors of communities against plague and epidemic. This is not necessarily so. Fukienese Wang Yeh fall into two categories. The first category comprises those whom the Fukienese know to be disease spirits or demons but, by using the polite honorific 'Wang Yeh', they not only avoid voicing the spirits' or demons' true identity and offending them, but also, in practice, honour them, with the consequential hope of buying them off. These are the Pestilence deities. The second category, revered by the majority of Fukienese believers, not only in Fukien province itself (on the mainland opposite Taiwan), but also by Fukienese settlers in South East Asia and Taiwan, consists of a number of individual deified folk heroes, bona fide deities from the higher echelons of the pantheon.\n\nA number of Taiwan temple keepers claim that the Wang Yeh were once all pestilence deities but nowadays in the eyes of the devotees they are gods 'who are everywhere and can do anything'. Pestilence Wang Yeh are second in the list of popular cults in Taiwan (based on the number of temples in which they are the main deity) following close on the heels of the very popular fishermen's protective deity T'ien Hou, often referred to as Ma Tsu or T'ien Shang Shengmu. Despite this, the appeal of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is limited and their status in comparison much lower.\n\nWithin Fukienese communities all Wang Yeh are now regarded as protectors. The specific Wang Yeh of the first category protect against plague and other pestilence; they have no history of earthly lives whereas the second category Wang Yeh, the community deities, are general...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212381, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 323, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "300\n\nin Singapore but not elsewhere, and the temple keeper was unwilling to offer any further information. A year or so later under a little pressure he revealed that he, personally, called them White Crane Mothers (Bai He Mu).\n\nRecently his son, who has now set up his own establishment, was more forthcoming. He began by saying that he did not agree with his father's description; the images were neither spirits (shen) nor demons (kuei) but were rather a substitute for the individual human (Ti-shen). Such images were carved by him for people who brought the description of the image required written, usually on red paper, by a spirit medium. He claimed that the practice was not unique to Hokkiens (people from the southern coastal province of Fukien) and that he had heard of it ‘all over China' including Taiwan (which is predominantly Hokkien speaking). He himself is a Hokkien though his clients in Singapore included local Ch'ao-chou, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese people.\n\nThe son explained that a living human may suffer from an unidentifiable ailment and having been to a western trained doctor and consulted a Chinese physician or herbalist, neither of whom has been able to diagnose the cause, in desperation he consults a temple spirit medium who, in a trance, discovers the cause, usually an 'unpaid debt from a previous life. Immediately after death souls are judged on the misdeeds done during their lifetime on earth and after purging their sins they are reborn. Occasionally misdeeds are missed and only discovered after the individual has been reborn, hence the ailment as punishment. The spirit medium is tasked to discover the identity in his or her previous life of the human now suffering from the unknown ailment and to record his or her likeness in that previous existence which will then be carved into an image. The surname of the individual in his or her previous life is also recorded on the reverse of the image. This image is unique to the family of the individual now alive, almost always with an entirely different surname to the one of the previous incarnation, and is kept on the family altar. It is never placed on a public altar for public reverence. After a ritual performed by the spirit medium the image is considered to house the spirit of the living individual with the ailment but with the identity of the previous incarnation, and it is expected that the spirit now residing within the image will absorb the 'unpaid debt' lifting the punishment from the living individual.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213615, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 211, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "184\n\nfrom China, whose image has not been noted during my travels around Chinese temples in South-east Asia nor in Taiwan, and almost certainly Hokkien as the main deity, the Third Prince Nazha, and the other deities in the original village temple included Fa-zhu Gong, Sun the Monkey deity and several unnamed pestilence Wangye.\n\nAn elderly carver in Singapore told me during the early 1960s that he knew nothing about the deity apart from having drawn a sketch for his personal records a year or so earlier. The deity is portrayed as a dishevelled fierce male, sitting, dressed in armour covered by a long red robe. He has bare feet, round staring eyes, and unkempt hair and beard. His skin is chocolate brown apart from the shaven or bald front half of his head and his cheeks which are decorated with white and coloured stripes of red and green. Such markings are very uncommon. Similar ones, typical of the painted faces of opera characters, have been noted on Fukienese pestilence Wangye and on minor warriors, escorts to major deities.\n\nSo, apart from his title and his possible ethnic group, Hokkien, we do not know his legend and background, nor do we know why or for what he was revered.\n\nHowever, now that his image has reappeared on an altar, in Tampenis New Town, who knows what might happen. It is not impossible for a miracle, revealed perhaps in a dream or trance, to be attributed to Qixing Dadi and for the cult to take on a new direction and life.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215021, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "73\n\nmiles south of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. It was assumed that the twinning was linked in some way with the CLC cemetery but why a small town of Hokkien-speaking Chinese, ethnic Min Nan from Fujian province who during the era of the CLC were under Japanese colonial rule, would have any links with the deceased northern Chinese of the CLC, is hard to see. Perhaps the fishermen of Tungkang fled Shandong province ahead of the Communist advance in 1948 and settled there and have family memories of the labourers. Possibly some members of the CLC returned to China and they, or their off-spring, emigrated to Taiwan. Another possibility could be that they wished to remember and commemorate their fellow countrymen, now resting in a foreign country\n\nit is a subject for further investigation. Two characters are carved into the side of the plinth of one, Yidou which simply\n\n益都 means of Benefit to All.\n\nMy wife and I hope to return, to explore the area more fully as we have enjoyed our brief visits.\n\nMemorial\n\nIt is very surprising that after all the assistance the Chinese, together with their British officers and NCOs, rendered to the Allies, especially the British, there is still no specific memorial to them, whether they survived or died, other than the various cemeteries, mainly in Belgium and France, in which they lie buried. It is never too late to consider erecting a memorial at one of their major base camps, such as Noyelles-sur-Mer, but I suppose the Governments of the main countries concerned would not be interested in such a project.\n\nOn my\n\nvisits to World War I battlefields in Belgium and France, and if the opportunity arises for me to visit a cemetery in which members of the CLC, whether officers, NCOs or Labourers are interred, then I pay my respects, considering that, even though there may be few graves or many, I am honouring all who gave up their lives.\n\nFinale\n\nVarious articles, books and unpublished reminiscences have been used in the preparation of this article. It is not my intention, and never has been, for me to view the various files held at the Public Records", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215069, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "122 etc. are the actual Taisui who perform the functions and duties of the deity. The bells have magical properties and a Hokkien god carver in Singapore explained that all Taisui images should carry one of four specific charms. The main one is the bell which when rung causes the hearer to lose his way and wander aimlessly. Therefore a demon hearing it forgets his task and wanders off. The other three charms are the seal of office which when shaken causes the heavens to quake; and two swords, one male and one female. Another unusual feature is Taisui's footwear. Normally he wears sandals but occasionally only one foot is shod the other being bare. This form is comparatively common on Fukien community altars, an excellent example being in the Buddhist temple in Yen Kiu Road in Singapore. Only one example has been noted in Hong Kong, on an altar on a junk in the Pearl River. The one bare and one shod foot is said to represent the amount of rain expected during the coming season [see above under The Rôle of Taisui for an explanation provided in eastern China]. A similar story has been told about the Immortal Lan Caihe and, as we have seen above, about Mang Shen.\n\nAn unusual large clay image of Taisui in a temple near Kam Tin in the New Territories depicts him with the bell in his left hand, and with a third eye. The bell, according to the temple keeper, has magical properties. Even more unusual is the image in Hung Hom in Kowloon with the usual bell in Taisui's right hand but unusually he has a Tantric necklace of thirteen skulls draped around his neck.\" Other lone image carvings are standard, anonymous seated officials or scholars with no particular characteristic and only identifiable as Taisui by the written Chinese characters on the front face of the base or because they are standing on piles of spirit money which, according to common belief, no other deity does. The lone Taisui image tends to be referred to as the 'Taisui [or Intendant] of the Current Year' EX-\n\nOver the years and in a number of places ranging from Singapore to northern China various informants have explained, mostly contradicting each other, that the images with a bell is the Taisui of the Year, the one with a scroll or tablet is the Taisui of the Month and those without anything are the Taisui of the Day.\n\nIn a small temple in Sepang near Port Dickson in Malaysia, three images on a side altar stand side by side. A typical Taisui image with a\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215318, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "THE POPULAR RELIGION GODS\n\nTHE HAINANESE\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n43\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis article is a study of the popular religion gods to be found on the altars of Chinese folk religion temples on the island of Hainan as well as in 'Hainanese temples' within the confines of former colonial territories in south-east Asia. I will be endeavouring to isolate the purely Han Chinese Hainanese deities from those of their surrounding neighbours, the non-Han minority peoples on Hainan itself as well as from emigrant Han Chinese communities in south-east Asia. The latter includes emigrants who speak the Han linguistic groups of Hakka, Hokkien (and its sub-groups including Minnan and Hengwa (Xinghua)), Cantonese (and two of its sub-groups) and Guangxi, as well as the smaller groups such as Chaozhou [Swatowese].\n\nThe tropical island of Hainan, literally \"South of the Ocean,\" lies off the south coast of China and was formerly part of Guangdong province. In 1988 it became a province in its own right. 150 miles in length and 100 in breadth, it is one sixth the size of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, half the size of Ceylon and four times the size of Cyprus, with its main port of Haikou and the provincial capital, Qiongzhou, both on its northern coast.\n\nSeparating the island of Hainan from the mainland is the Qiongzhou Straits, with the 170-mile-long Leizhou peninsula in Guangdong province leading into the mainland proper. The proximity of the Leizhou peninsula has led to a small number of the deities with a Guangxi base being incorporated into Hainanese legend and carried by emigrants to all parts of south-east Asia, often without the connection being realised. Devotees in distant parts have assumed that these deities were unique to Hainan, even to accepting place names within the legends as Hainanese when they were quite clearly from the Leizhou-Guangxi border region.\n\nHistorically, Hainan island was one of the later regions to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215321, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "46\n\nmuddy plats, eventually reached the first \"gun-house,\" as the crumbling fort was known to the Chinese. Finally, the passengers reached the Custom House and on to whatever accommodation they had reserved or could find in this very primitive European backwater.\n\nChinese immigrants from Hainan, along with those from Fujian, Guangxi, and Guangdong, flocked down to the foreign colonies of south-east Asia. Though integrated into the greater Han Chinese population of Singapore and Penang, as well as within towns and cities in North Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, even today Hainanese have remained in one or two linguistic pockets, such as is to be found in the area of Rengam and Kluang in southern Malaysia.\n\nOnly a few of all the Chinese temples visited in South-east Asia have been categorically identified as exclusively founded by Hainanese immigrants. Others, predominantly Hokkien, have a Hainanese altar stuck away in one corner, erected by the few local Hainanese, though two temples stood out, both in southern Malaysia, in which the images of the deities were predominantly uniquely Hainanese, though the temple custodians, the devotees, and the other images were all Hokkien. The picture gained from Hainanese staff and devotees in temples containing uniquely Hainanese images revealed the following minimum of temples being predominantly, if not entirely, Hainanese - six in Singapore, two in Penang, one in Kuala Lumpur, one in Seremban, and two in or near Kluang in southern Malaysia; on Sumatra, one in Medan and two in Palembang; on Java, one in Jakarta, one in Cirebon, and one in Semarang. There are several in Ha Tien in southern Cambodia and others scattered across southern Thailand. The strangest of all was the lone, small Hainanese temple on Bali.\n\nHainanese temple altars bear the usual accoutrements and have the same layout as altars in other Chinese communities, though, to generalise, with less clutter, particularly on altars in Hainanese Huiguan [community club houses]. Major China-wide deities, such as Guan Yin, Guan Gong, Hua Guang, City Gods, Earth Gods, and the Wealth Gods, are the same as in every Chinese community. There are also a number of predominantly Cantonese, Chaozhou, and even Minnan deities in many of the Hainanese temples both in Hainan and in South-east Asia, adopted from other immigrant ethnic groups, including Jinhua Niangniang, Caibo Xingjun, Fazhu Gong, Qi Tian Da Sheng, Longwei.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215322, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "47\n\nShenggong and Li Shan Shengmu. Also noted in Hainanese temples in the vicinity of Kluang are Under Altars, usually connected with Cantonese temples, though again presumably \"borrowed\" by Hainanese. Only two such Under Altars have been noted - both are typically at floor level and contain spirits of tamed demons unfit to be honoured with places upon the main or side altars. Finally, not too uncommon in Malaysia and Singapore where ethnic communities live cheek by jowl, a dark-skinned deity in the Hainanese temple in Jalan Pindu in Singapore was identified as General Supramaniam, placed there by a local Tamil and with the usual tolerance of Chinese devotees, though not revered by them, he has incense placed before him by passing Chinese devotees who realise and accept that he is a foreign deity and not of the Chinese pantheon.\n\nFrom 1949 until the late 1980s folk religion images were banned and removed from altars within China and therefore Hainanese deities have had to be researched mainly within overseas Chinese communities. To carry out the necessary research on Hainanese temples and gods it has been necessary to visit as many of the temples run by and in Hainanese communities outside China, mainly concentrated in Singapore, southern Malaysia and Cambodia. The regular visits to temples in Singapore over a period of years revealed changes within the temple community which would not have been apparent under normal circumstances. Accepting that the circumstances were unique in that the Singaporean authorities forced the resettlement of old and especially 'temporary matshed or corrugated iron' temples to the suburbs in the targeted population relocation of the sixties and seventies, a good example of the change was the resiting in 1984 of an atap hut temple, the oldest Hainanese community temple, in Lorong Ah Soo to a custom-built complex in Hougang Avenue 5. The layout of the altar images in the new Hainanese temple was unchanged as reflected in black and white photographs taken in Lorong Ah Soo in the late fifties and colour photographs taken in Hougang in 1985. The four custom-built temples, one of which is the Hainanese re-located temple, consist of a terraced row of four brick buildings, similar to two-car garages but with high ceilings and much wider than a standard garage.\n\nIn the years up to the 1950s not only did the diversity of language amongst the overseas Chinese in south-east Asia [Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Chaozhou, as well as Hainanese] impose a real barrier", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215342, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "67\n\nhave been unable to explain his origins, history or any other details. In Malaysia we were told that he had been a hero, killed in the Leizhou peninsular immediately to the north of Hainan [or 'in Leizhou city (nowadays Leicheng) in western Guangdong province'], and that he had been a general, the eldest of three brothers, who had long ago earned great merit working for the common good and was deified. In Singapore, where again he is depicted as one image in the centre of a comparatively crowded secondary altar, it was claimed that he had been a general, killed several centuries ago saving a major unidentified town from invaders. His festivals are celebrated on the 17th of both the first and third lunar months.\n\nOne of the two temples in Malaysia contained three images on the main altar, the usual image of Baima Laoshi Gong together with two standard seated images of mandarins. These were identified as the First, Second and Third Laoshi Gong and were understood to have been brought to Malaysia by immigrants from Hainan some forty years ago. The temple keepers and devotees of both these temples were predominantly Chaozhou Chinese. Nowadays devotees of this cult in Singapore, however, are predominantly Hengwa (Xinghua) from Fujian province.\n\nLapshi Gong is prayed to for 'household affairs' in one of the two temples in central Malaysia, whilst in the other, run by a popular medium who spoke with the voice of Laoshi Gong and is claimed to be extremely gifted, the deity is believed to be able to cure most illnesses. The deity was being treated with exceptional reverence during the latest visit by the author, when a ritual was being performed before the altar requesting a cure for a very sickly looking infant held by its anxious mother.\n\nAmong the Hengwa Hokkiens in Singapore he is rarely revered as a separate deity. He is prayed to and offered incense and oil as one of the collection of deities on the altar, though the temple keeper added that a number of gamblers specifically pray to him. The temple keeper also said that he had not been aware that the deity had any such speciality when first he had taken over the temple in the early sixties. The custom of gamblers seeking divine help was fairly recent and had, he presumed, developed after someone had had a win following a petition to the deity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215343, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "68\n\nLaoshi Gong has a unique image. He is portrayed as a general sitting on a folding camp stool, in the process of drawing his sword from its scabbard with his right hand. The sword is partially withdrawn from its scabbard which is hanging on his left side and clasped by the left hand. His helmet has a large pointed spike on top [like the German pickelhaube], and he has four flags protruding from the rack in which they are secured across his back, above his shoulders indicating his rank. The camp stool is an interesting feature. It is a typical folding stool, with a full tiger skin carefully arranged, draped over the back of the stool, the whole image and stool with skin being carved from one block.\n\nLin Fu Taishi Gong, is usually simply referred to as Taishi Gong or Taishi Ye. He is a minor deity in two temples, one in the Hainanese temple, off Balestier Road in Singapore where he was referred to as Lin Fu Xiangye, Prime Minister Lin, with his annual festival celebrated on the double eighth. The other is a Hokkien temple in Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, where he is a minor deity having been placed there by members of the small Hainanese community. He is also known in Ampang as Marshal Lin, Lin Fu Yuanshuai or Lin Fu Dashi, and, during the annual festival of the major Hokkien deity Nine Emperors, is represented by his incense urn when carried in procession with three other deities. They are all accompanied by spirit mediums who are possessed by these deities, including Lin Fu Dashi. In both of these temples he is renowned for his ability to cure [internal] diseases and, especially in Ampang, he is also prayed to for wealth and good business. Temple custodians identified the deity as one of their clan ancestors, Lin Xiyuan who, according to biographies, was born in Fujian during the Ming, and died in about AD 1561. He became an official who argued long and hard against the power of the palace eunuchs, and was renowned for the help he provided to the populace during a major famine. Amongst his many achievements were his successes in the field of education in Guangdong province, and the use of a military force to destroy a band of robbers. He is also claimed to have pacified a number of outlaws. During the troubles in Annam he organised a pacification force, built up an intelligence network only to find that he was not required to act, either by the emperor or by the situation. He was dismissed, accused of usurping his authority and returned to his home where he wrote poetry and Confucian dissertations. He studied for many years and wrote source books for\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215350, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "75\n\nsouls (that is the Second to the Ninth as the First and Tenth Courts are basically administrative.)\n\nc] Yinya Ya Shuai\n\nThe Silver Tooth Vice-marshal, P, has been noted only in one temple, a popular religion rural shrine in a Hainanese community in Paya Lebar in Singapore now long gone due to urbanisation. It is a unique image, a stark and fierce black-faced soldier holding two magic “swords\" (whips) one in each hand and sitting astride a mythical animal, possibly a Qilin. He is portrayed as demonic and may well be an aide to a major deity, the main deity on the altar being Lei Zu. He was not venerated in his own right, though devotees did place incense before his, and every other image in the temple.\n\nThe Silver Tooth Vice-Marshal is co-located in several Hainanese temples with the White Tooth General, Baiya Zhongjiang, who is also a minor deity, an assistant and escorting-general to Doutian Yuanshuai (Lei Zu) and also known as Baiya Jiangjun. His image has been noted only in Singapore and Seremban on folk religion altars where he is portrayed standing on one foot, with his right foot raised behind as if running, and holding a flag bearing the character, ling [By Order] in his left hand. He has a stark white face. His image in a Hainanese community temple in Payar Lebar Crescent, now long removed for a housing development scheme, was referred to together with the Silver-Tooth Vice-Marshal as one of the pair of deputies to the main deity on the altar, Doutian Fushuai. In another temple, he was co-located on a Hainanese community altar with Wantian Zhushuai who was less starkly white-faced. His image, primarily revered in Henghua Hokkien communities in Singapore and Malaysia, was portrayed as the main deity in the Under Altar at the side wall of the main hall of the Nine Carps Temple [Jiuli Xian] in Singapore as a seated scholar dressed in a white robe and scholar official's cap, holding a triangular flag in his right hand and a red globe in his left.\n\nThe temple custodian knew nothing of the origins or legends of either the White Tooth Marshal or the Silver Tooth Vice Marshal.\n\n7: Deified Locals\n\na] Two separate women have been individually revered on altars", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215353, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "78\n\nHainan island as well as within Hainanese communities in south-east Asia. Although their legends are unique to Hainanese they are similar in style and format to those told in other ethnic groups.\n\nSadly, most of the rural temples on Hainan island itself have little left of their original images following the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. It is fortunate that we do still have several Hainanese communities in south-east Asia where little has changed over the past century. However, intermarriage between Hainanese devotees and those of other Han ethnic groups has meant that to identify cults as uniquely Hainanese has become that much more difficult.\n\nNOTES\n\n1\n\n2\n\nPopular or folk religion is an amalgam of Buddhist, Daoist and local beliefs ignored by Confucianists, Buddhists and Daoists as well as by the majority of educated Chinese.\n\nHengwa is sometimes referred to as the Puxian sub-group.\n\nHokkien is the Fujian linguistic group word for Fujian people as well as their language. Minnan is the area of southern Fujian province from which many immigrants to Taiwan and South-east Asia originated and is a linguistic sub-group of Hokkien.\n\n4 Buddhist and Daoist images on such altars have not been included in this article, even though a number have been seen on folk religion altars in Hainanese temples, as they are all revered China-wide.\n\n5 Ma Zu is primarily the Fujian community title for Tian Hou.\n\n7\n\nBoth Third and Fourth are deities that have been noted on Hainan island and within Hainanese overseas communities.\n\nAn entirely different deity, the Saintly Matron of Wenzhou, Wenzhou Shengmu would appear not to be connected in any way with Wenzhou Houwang. Nor has she been noted on altars within the overseas southern Chinese communities. She has only been noted by William Mesny who saw an image of her in Zhejiang province in 1896 [doubtless connected with the local coastal city of Wenzhou], and suggested that as her surname appeared to have been Lin she may well be Tian Hou, the patron goddess of seafarers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216161, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 460, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "394\n\nfood in village culture. Early last century, the meals in most village families were basic for most of the year: consisting of rice with salt fish or preserved vegetables, with meat once or twice a month. During my initial researches into Hong Kong's rural history, a local leader impressed upon me how people so looked forward to the major festivals of the year, for it was only then, most notably at the lunar new year, that they could have a greater variety of food, and more of it. Major family events, like the marriages of sons and the celebration of old age, were welcomed for the same reason. Anticipation was heightened by the confident expectation that even if they could not afford the expense and had to borrow cash or mortgage land, families would provide the proper feasts on these occasions, or else \"lose face\" in the community.\n\nLike much else in Chinese culture, the dishes prepared at such times were named so as to have auspicious meanings. For instance, at the lunar New Year, oysters, in Cantonese pronunciation named ho si conveyed the sense of good luck, whilst a dish of green vegetables, faat choi, expressed the wish that all those attending the feast would get rich. There were, and are, many such examples - see, pp.46-7 of T. C. Lai's book, At the Chinese Table (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1984), also in the Images of Asia series. Even more focused on this topic is another interesting book, recently reprinted (2001) from the original edition of 1991 by Graham Brash, Singapore: namely Koh-Hwang I-Ling's Symbolism in Chinese Food. This is recommended reading, albeit it relates to Singapore Chinese of Hokkien descent, rather than the Cantonese and Hakka who are the subject of my book.\n\n-\n\nA certain type of food eaten at village feasts had (and still has) a distinct social function. This was the \"basin food\" provided for, and often by, the whole village on celebratory occasions. Consisting of very fat pork, with bits of turnip, dried mushrooms, beancurd and the like, cooked and mixed together, it was meant to indicate the equality and solidarity or brother-hood of participants. It was and is not confined to men but includes women and children. It is communal in every sense of the word, and is intended to be such. Its preparation involved persons from each family in one or other of the many tasks involved, from providing or marketing for the ingredients, the building of an outdoor stove and its covering, the collection of dried grass and firewood to feed the stove for the cooking, fetching water, washing crockery before and after, bringing tables and benches to the site, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216199, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 498, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "432\n\nskinned, whilst the other had been put to work supervising the father's labourers in the fields and whose skin had been burned black. The elder was said to be depicted at thirteen years of age whilst the second was two years younger. Ruan, the younger prince, is portrayed with a fierce expression whilst the elder has a gentler look despite not having any eyebrows. Both tend to be depicted with white [pink] or black skin, and are barefoot. Both are dressed simply, in trousers and a small apron. They wear golden bracelets on their forearms and their head-dress consists of a gilded crown from which protrude long peacock's feathers. A tiny matshed seaside shrine at Port Dickson, also on the west coast of Malaysia, contains a small composite image of the youths, most certainly wrestling, one grasping the other by his queue and an arm.\n\nIn a temple in Singapore the keeper was adamant that the two youths only spoke Hindi and that many of the devotees in his temple praying before them were Singaporean Indians who regularly consulted the Hokkien [Fujian] spirit medium in the temple. In every day life the medium only spoke Hokkien and therefore had to work through a spirit interpreter. The Indian devotees, he added, could only understand their mother tongue, Tamil, one of the Dravidian languages of southern India and who seemed to be able to converse with the deities through the medium without any trouble 'as the medium in his trance spoke Tamil'.\n\nIn one temple in Fujian recently a local Chinese explained that they were homosexuals presumably a guess inspired by their pose. However, you can imagine our reaction when in a village temple in Kaohsiung county in southern Taiwan we saw what appeared to be the standard image of the pair, swathed as usual in silken robes donated by devotees, being “undressed\" by the leering temple custodian to reveal that the dark skinned youth was holding the white skinned by the forearm and his queue whilst the white skinned youth had one arm around the shoulder of the black skinned one, but was holding the black skinned youth's penis with the other hand. The custodian fell about when he saw how disconcerted we were. The village elders left their card playing on the temple veranda to join in the general laughter which encouraged village children to rush in to see what was happening. They were chased out but not before several had managed to see the image and were unable to get out fast enough to tell the others what they had seen. The custodian explained that someone had ordered the image to be carved this way some years ago, possibly as a joke, and very few devotees", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]